This is a cake I made for our AFL Grand Final celebration. My partner's team made it into the granny, so he suggested a baked good to celebrate. His team's (Hawthorn's) colours are brown and gold stripes, so I opted to make a vertically striped cake to represent it. The brown layer is quite obviously chocolate mudcake, while the gold layer is banana mudcake. The whole thing is layered and filled with dark chocolate ganache.

I made the cake vegan to accomodate all dietary requirments of people attending, though there's hardly any difference in the recipe. It's one of those basically accidentally vegan cakes.

Basically, just with less death (but only just). I'm a lot more passionate/one-eyed about it than he is. He's a Carlton member now and comes to me with all the games, and considers Carlton his 'second favourite' team. I keep saying I'll convert him, but it's not gonna work. But when we go see Carlton vs Hawks he actually feels conflicted about who he wants to win and sometimes accidentally barracks/claps for my team. That's about as good as it's gonna get, I feel.

It's actually a total sore spot for me. Cause ever since we met (83 months ago, he tells me) we've been going to Carlton/Hawks games. And in that entire time we've lost every time. I have to sit there with his whole Hawks-supporting family, me being the only Carlton supporter, listening to them rubbishing my team and cheering while my heart shatters. And not only have we lost, we've either been annihilated, or only just lost in agonising circumstances. The player I hate most in the entire league also plays for Hawthorn. So I constantly remind him how much I increasingly hate his team and wish them failure (they repay me by constantly making and sometimes winning the grand final). He's a non-confrontational person and I'm just a bitch, so I'm the only one who agonises over it haha. I get angry for a million years after we lose, he just wants me to be happy and isn't especially concerned with the result.

So for me, making a Hawthorn cake was kind of a big deal and I still feel a little gross for it. Though you'll notice I refused to name the cake after his team.

Growing up I always said I'd have to date a Carlton supporter because it would be too difficult otherwise (mostly because of me being a psycho hot-head over a ball game). As I said with many other things we differ on (e.g. religion). But you fall in love and all the rules go our the window. And he puts up with me.

Yeah, I think the fact that Julien puts up with me is what makes our relationship work as well. At least you bake and cook for him, so he's lucky. Julien is a really good cook, so I have nothing to balance the situation, well I have boobs and a messed up sense of humour, so that's okay I guess.

He seriously counts every month. On the 27th of every month he messages me saying "happy XX months since meeting me!"

OOOOOH BURN. Yeah we're not doing great now. We had a thing a bit over a decade ago where some idiots at the club breached the salary cap, so we got some massive penalties that we're still recovering from. I spent a lot of years sitting in the stands watching us get smashed be over 100 points, week in, week out. We're only just starting to be good again (and we can beat everyone else, just never Hawthorn apparently). But we've won more premierships than any other team in the league so we're better than everyone so say me.

YOU BAKE AWESOME THINGS. And you are amazing. And you make the cutest babies. Yes, plural. Even though second baby has not been birthed yet I already know!!

Bahaha. Basically, most sporting teams have a limit of money they are allowed to pay players called the salary cap. The CEO of our club paid a couple players under the table so we got a million dollar fine and lost our draft picks (which you use to get new players) for the next two years and were banned from trading players into it. It absolutely crippled us. A lot of us are still bitter over it because our punishment was way larger than any other club had received in the past, or since. When I met Cam, both our teams were two of the three worst in the league, but they've been able to recover through the trade and we're still trying.

Wow! The colours are so crisp and clean. Man I could go for a slice of that right now ^^ Obviously can't but what I can be impressed by is your photography - I honestly think your pictures are getting better and better! The layout of this one is gorgeous, the cake fills the entire frame aside from the cool white, giving the feeling of cake and cream <3 Gosh I'm starving now